


Appassionata

by orphan_account



Category: Cain Saga and Godchild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Orchestra, Gen, a modern translation of that old froofy victorian clusterdeathfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:57:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Cain was five, he picked up a violin for the first time and was made to play until his fingers bled. He wanted to hate it, but there was only so much hate he could muster. Instead, he resolved to love the violin and make it his own. [the orchestra!au]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appassionata

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veleda_k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veleda_k/gifts).



Cain hears about the arson twelve hours before the arson, but the pieces don’t start coming together until he catches Alexis’s statement on the evening news. While his concert hall smolders behind him and the cops lead his concertmaster-turned-arsonist into a waiting patrol car, Alexis broadcasts all the appropriate emotions (sorrow, despair, veiled anger) with only a private crinkle of victory at the corners of his eyes for Cain.

“We are all saddened by this betrayal,” he says to the doe-eyed reporter. “However, I hope to find light in this event. I hope to invite my son Cain to serve as concertmaster while we resolve the situation at hand. Thank you.”

Merryweather joins him at the end of the report while Cain reels.

“Will you have to return to Father?” she asks during a commercial.

Cain gives her the remote without needing to be asked and does not answer her question. The arson--for which Cain is sure the concertmaster in custody was framed--left Alexis’s latest multi-million dollar investment a charred shell of its previous grandeur. He tries to keep from over-thinking the how of it all. How Alexis framed his concertmaster for such a crime was of no matter (Cain did want to _know_ , of course, but that question could wait), while the _why_ was of utmost importance.

Alexis’s words, brief and pointed, resonate in the back of his head, sending a familiar crawl across the nape of his neck. He wanted Cain to take the position in his orchestra, but _why_?

It would be a terrific scandal, of course. At twenty-one, Cain was preposterously young for the role. If he were to take Alexis’s excruciatingly public offer, he would draw arguably more publicity to the orchestra than even the arson. He would be scrutinized, of course, and any mistakes would be broadcasted for the entire community to see. The potential for humiliation there would be so profound that it, in and of itself, might be enough reason for Alexis to stage such a farce.

Cain would also, of course, be forced to take his leave of Juilliard and return to England. He would have to leave Merryweather--she’d die before leaving in the middle of her first year of high school. He would once more be ensnared in the latest twisted play Alexis intends on acting out in the public eye. Any one eventuality might be enough to motivate Alexis in this.

Yet Cain can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s something more. Alexis treasures his real estate conquests more than most everything else and he wouldn’t let his concert hall burn so easily.

He still hasn’t come to a satisfactory conclusion by the time Merryweather finishes her show and turns to him with her curious eyes. Cain reminds himself that he doesn’t _need_ to know. It would be just as easy to ignore Alexis’s provocations and to stay in this life he’s creating for himself, by himself. He would be faced with some questions from his peers down the line about his questionable decision to refuse such an apparently wonderful opportunity to further his career, but no one would ever pry too hard.

But he _has_ to know. As flawed and demented a creature Alexis has become, Cain could never claim to be perfect himself. His flaw has always been this--that he always has to solve the puzzle Alexis places in front of him as bait, that he always has to know.

Merryweather helps him pack his bags that night. When she catches him staring at his violin, both the pride and bane of his existence, she asks him to play the Appassionata before he goes. It was a sonata he had yet to master since taking up the piano upon his arrival in New York. “It’s to remind you that this is waiting for you when you come home. You’d never leave anything half-learned, would you?”

It only occurs to Cain then that Alexis could be playing for keeps. He kneels in front of his sister and sets his violin aside.

“I promise, Merryweather,” he says, smiling up at her as she gives him her full attention. “I’ll be home soon.”

She takes his hand and guides him over to the piano instead of voicing the doubt they both know she’s feeling. Cain sits and performs the first movement of the piece for her, twice when she asks. She sends him away with a hug and tears in her eyes and Cain leaves his violin with her.

 

When Cain was five, he picked up a violin for the first time and was made to play until his fingers bled. For years, funeral music was all he was taught. Alexis ordered him to play long into the night, every night, and always the same compositions--an exact replica of the recital performed during Augusta’s funeral.

He wanted to hate it, but there was only so much hate he could muster.

Instead, he resolved to love the violin and make it his own.

 

LaGuardia is all but empty when Cain arrives in the middle of the night. There isn’t a red-eye flight he needs to catch, but he knew neither he nor Merryweather needed a drawn-out goodbye. He buys a ticket for a flight in twelve hours and spends ten reading in front of his gate.

Planes and people come and go to France, Japan, Malaysia. Cain imagines himself in these places instead of Mayfair, where he’s certain he’ll be going. He imagines the music he would hear there to drown out the perpetual soundtrack of classical noise in his ears. Once he runs out of imagination and knows it’ll be too late to change his mind, he calls Uncle Neal to ask him to watch over Merryweather while he’s in New York.

Uncle Neal, of course, tries to change his mind. Cain doesn’t give him the time, instead hanging up once he’s gotten a promise out of him that Merryweather will be safe. He texts Oscar, next. The oaf would be in New York in two weeks’ time, just before Uncle Neal’s departure, for a study abroad program--he would be only too happy to check in on Merryweather. Even though Cain hates to ask him (of all people) for such a favor (of all favors), he knows his options are few.

He contemplates a coffee as his boarding time approaches and a Starbucks cup appears in front of him before he’s even finished thinking about the pagoda one gate down.

“You looked like you could use a drink,” the man attached to the hand holding the cup out to him says.

His voice is soft, and British, and his features sharp, and British. When Cain looks at him, he could almost swear he’s seen him before, but no name comes to mind. He maintains a neutral expression while he deliberates, and ultimately decides to smile.

“Do I look like I’m incapable of getting a drink?”

“Not at all.” The man drops his hand and sets the coffee down on the armrest, where it balances precariously until Cain is forced to take it before it spills onto his lap. “It’s just that the lines always get long around boarding time.”

He isn’t wrong. The line, a balanced mix of weary and excited travellers, in front of the pagoda grows by the minute. Cain sniffs the cup for poison (and outdated yet still possible method of murder) and gets a whiff of nothing more than coffee and steam. He curls his other hand around the warmth of it.

“Next time, wait for me to ask,” he says before he takes a drink. He wipes the cuff of his sleeve over his mouth, a new faint stain joining the others. “Thanks anyway.”

The man laughs as a couple with a squalling child takes the seats across from them. They sit in silence while the rest of the gate shifts and mumbles around them until the first boarding numbers of their flight are called. He holds out a hand, then, open and empty this time.

“Riff.”

Cain picks up his carry-on and smiles again without taking the hand. “That’s me. See you around.”

Naturally, around turns out to be within five minutes as Riff takes the seat next to his. Had he had the energy, Cain might have been surprised. He doesn’t acknowledge him until after take-off.

“Business or pleasure?” he asks when the seatbelt light goes dark.

“Just going home,” Riff says. “Yourself?”

Cain slouches in his seat and stretches his legs out as he watches a stewardess make her way down their aisle. “The same, I suppose.”

Riff takes a water when they’re asked what they’d like to drink. Cain takes out his passport and shows his age before settling back.

“ _Now_ you may buy me a drink.”

 

Cain believed in coincidence when he was thirteen. The boy had a warm smile and cold skin and Cain trusted Jezebel Disraeli with ease when they were first introduced. He made his first friend in his first year of school away from home. Jezebel tutored him in subjects he feigned ignorance in, giving him reason to stay cocooned in the school library for hours before he needed to go home.

Alexis kept him awake on his violin later than usual, sometimes through the entire night, as punishment for those missing hours, but Cain began to look forward to the next day in a way he never did.

It wasn’t long before he came in from an archery lesson to find Jezebel on his knees before his father, receiving praise and orders to remove himself from Cain’s life--orders that were to override his previous ones to falsely befriend Cain. Jezebel’s smile, when he turned it on Cain, had gone cold.

Cain stopped believing in a lot of things that day.

 

And because Cain no longer believed in coincidence, he stopped smiling at the mild-mannered nature in which Riff spoke as soon as he learned the man was to replace a retiring pianist in Alexis’s symphony.

“What are the chances?” Riff says when Cain finally gives him his name, and thereby the name of his father. He seems appropriately surprised, not overacting the role of the coincidental companion.

Cain doesn’t need to contemplate for long to know that the chances are exactly none that this wasn’t part of Alexis’s newest grand plan. He wanted to believe that the prodigal pianist turned med student (turned pianist once more) with the quiet voice and temperament was every bit the friendly face he presented himself as in the same way he wanted to believe any professor at Juilliard taking interest in him was _not_ sent by Alexis to monitor his life.

He let himself feel sympathy when Riff talks about the fire that killed his family and the memories the recent arson brought back when he heard about it on the news. He let himself offer his genuine congratulations when Riff tells him how lucky he was that Alexis’s talent scout came across him as he was playing for the seniors at the hospital where he had been doing his residency. He lets himself go for the duration of the flight when he’s above all of Alexis’s scheming and enjoys Riff’s company.

He also teases Riff for being a chatterbox as they start to descend and doesn’t admit to himself that he’d been the one asking the questions, asking to learn more.

And he definitely doesn’t start believing in a warm smile and unprovoked coffee--not even when they share a cab to a hotel in the city.

 

Cain privately accepts Alexis’s invitation in a curt text of affirmation. The news makes its way to several online magazines within the day and the twenty-one year old genius concertmaster becomes _the_ headline within the orchestral community. He ignores all the speculation and the occasional accusation--of nepotism, primarily--in favor of moving back into the family flat in Mayfair after a private courier delivers the keys to his hotel room. (He knows it’s Alexis’s way of telling him in no uncertain terms that he’ll be watched, but it would be pointless to back down from such an obvious challenge now.)

He gets back in touch with Crehador once he’s settled and only half-jokes that he should call the police if anything mysterious happens to him.

“The Hargreaves,” Crehador says dryly over a brunch meeting. “Always keen to help each other into an early grave.”

Cain remains as unamused as anyone can in Crehador’s company. The hack magician (now, through some incredibly improbable twist of what could only be described as magic, a rather popular socialite) doesn’t seem offended by his muted reception of his humor.

“I never did think I’d see you back here in this garden, with this tea set.”

Instead of agreeing that he never imagined himself coming back as Crehador is certainly expecting him to, Cain says, “What do you know about Riffael Raffit?”

Crehador laughs--it isn’t mean, but it’s hardly pleasant--and unscrews a flask as he shakes his head. “I’ll need a stronger drink than tea if we’re going to talk about _boys_ , Cain Hargreaves.”

Crehador has never met Riff, but Crehador once worked for Alexis. Cain takes his word with a grain of salt and accepts an invitation to some sort of holiday party with a to be determined date and time.

Over the next few days, Cain begins to attend rehearsals per Alexis’s instructions. He’s met with equal parts respect and contempt, and Riff continues to play the role of an impossibly kind stranger impossibly well despite Cain’s resolution to treat him terribly. He’s introduced to a man named Owl

(“Did you come straight from Gatsby’s party, then,” Cain says, feeling particularly derisive that day after Riff smiled away another of his attempts to offend him.

“Please,” Owl says and scoffs. “I’m only here to listen. I’ve hardly any interest in analyzing.”)

who will be producing their Christmas album. The music is easy enough to learn, but the brass section seems intent on disrupting every session with complaints and suggestions geared towards--to put it rather crudely--ruining Cain’s life.

He makes excuses to avoid going out for drinks with the group when he’s invited by the girls and focuses on putting a reason to Alexis’s scheming. The task is made increasingly difficult by his father’s absence, reported as a routine publicity trip to various fundraisers throughout Europe. Cain collects the brief messages Alexis sends once in a while when he wants a composition changed or a rehearsal extended. The pieces that fell together so easily at first were clashing now, forming an undecipherable image.

Alexis’s intentions stay as unclear as ever. Cain knows he’ll do anything to reach his end goal, but he can’t simply wait to find out what that goal might be.

When it becomes obvious after too many sleepless nights that waiting is the only thing he _can_ do at the moment, he turns his full attention to the strange riddle Riff perhaps unintentionally poses. He treats Cain like a friend and with endless patience.

Cain makes a hobby out of breaking that patience.

“I heard a music shop opened up by your hotel,” he would say while Riff was still between permanent residencies.

Riff would look up from the piano and smile. “You wanted to pay it a visit?”

Cain would shake his head. “I need you to pick up some Pirastro Oliv strings for me. I’ll text you the details.”

The strings would be waiting for him in the morning. He would send Riff on errands--picking up lunch, distributing sheet music, and the works--that he would perform without question. He would schedule a brunch (“Not for business, just as friends,” he would say. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”) and cancel the day before, but he would never hear Riff complain.

And he would talk about Alexis, waiting for the moment Riff slips and admits he’s nothing more than the lackey Cain assumes him to be.

It isn’t a very fruitful hobby. Riff never shows any cracks in his patience, his act--if it is an act at all.

By the time they finish with the bulk of their recording sessions, Cain is starting to doubt his own conviction against the existence against simple coincidences such as that of his meeting Riffael Raffit.

 

Cain wasn’t quite eighteen when he took Merryweather and a violin to New York. They talked about their new lives as they flew. He would busk in Manhattan and she would read the fortunes of the audience he was sure to amass, and they would never have to play a role for Alexis’s sake again. Cain would go to Juilliard when he was discovered and make a name for himself separate of Alexis’s and Merryweather would go to a school without uniforms. She would help him escape his need to please Alexis, to beat Alexis--to have anything to do with Alexis.

Their romantic ideas of living in poverty were never actualized. Uncle Neal picked them up before they even left the airport. Cain did go to Juilliard and Merryweather was enrolled in a school without uniforms just as she wanted.

And if Cain knew escaping Alexis was only a hopeless dream, he kept it to himself.

 

Half the orchestra is attending the weeks-early Christmas party Crehador invited Cain to. His answer of, “I’ll attend. It sounds like quite the event,” to Crehador changes quickly to, “I believe I’ll be ill that night,” as each section of the orchestra falls to talking excitedly about this party.

He’s asked again and reminded endlessly of the thing until he agrees to go along with the others. Cain tries to spend as little time with the orchestra as possible--the entire pack of them worked for Alexis, after all--but Crehador had assured him the party wouldn’t consist of _only_ their happy little family.

“No harm in it,” Crehador says when Cain calls.

Cain shrugs and hangs up before he says, “I suppose.”

Riff meets him with his dry cleaning the day of and compliments him on his flat. (It wasn’t that Cain trusted him with his personal address, but rather that he doubted the inherent privacy of a flat Alexis chose for him anyway. Inviting one of his father’s lackeys in could do no further harm.)

“You don’t need to humor me, Riff,” Cain says. He gestures for Riff to set his clothes down and drops his jacket onto the floor with the rest of his clutter. “It’s a sty.”

Riff doesn’t contradict him for the sake of playing favorites with Alexis’s clear favorite like (as Cain as learned through rather arduous forced conversations) the woodwind section is prone to do. He toes away an open book on the floor and drapes the clothes over the back of the couch. “I could tidy up.”

Cain laughs as he picks out the suit he’ll be wearing from the pile. “Yeah, Riff. Alright. Clean my house.”

He takes his time in his room getting changed. He plays one of the records Owl sent him home with, loudly enough that he wouldn’t hear it if Riff were looking through his things for--something. Cain doesn’t know what Alexis might hope to find, but he has nothing to hide other than the niggling thought at the back of his head that Riff might really just be _cleaning_ out there.

By the time he chooses a hat and returns to the living room, his clutter is gone and Riff is on the phone, calling a cab. Cain settles against the back of his couch to observe. Nothing seems to be missing--simply organized. Cain feels his distrust buckling against his better judgment. He focuses instead on a wrapped package on the coffee table that he doesn’t recognize.

“For Christmas,” Riff says as he places the phone back down in its cradle.

Cain turns the box over in his hands for a moment before he pulls the ribbon loose and lifts the lid of the box. A cake of rosin slides out into his palm when he tips the box over.

“I noticed you were running low,” Riff says.

Cain turns the rosin over in his hand a few times. He considers lying and telling Riff that he was mistaken, or that this wasn’t the brand he used--but he _was_ running low and it _was_ the brand he used. He considers not saying anything at all.

As the cab arrives and honks for them outside, he drops the rosin into his pocket and settles on, “Thanks.”

 

Cain allows himself to relax.

He smiles for the woodwind girls that flirt with him and he introduces Crehador to Riff without suspecting them of sharing some sort of secretive exchange in Alexis’s name. He dances with a woman nearly twice his age and a bright-eyed girl who must have been younger than Merryweather.

The sparkling mood of the party--more of a gala at this point than anything--seeps through his skin with each passing hour.

He’s humming when he returns to his table. The sound dies in his throat when he sees his companions rise to greet an expression of hidden malice that could only ever exist on his father’s face.

Alexis hasn’t changed. His posture--shoulders high and broad, head held up straight--is the same as it was when Cain left him standing three years ago. Crehador is greeting him, but Cain doesn’t hear the words as he sees the girl standing, her expression caught somewhere between meek and leering, half a step behind his father. She bears startling similarities to a girl Cain once knew and still can’t bear to think about, and he’s sure Alexis knows that well.

“Riffael.”

Cain feels his attention jerked away from the girl behind Alexis when he hears that name in _that_ man’s voice. He forces his back straight and his expression calm as Alexis extends a hand.

“A pleasure to finally meet the prodigy I’ve heard so much about,” Alexis says.

There’s a moment where Cain could swear everything goes silent and still. Then Riff is moving to stand behind Cain, the same way the girl with the ancient eyes stands behind Alexis, where he reaches out to take two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter instead of Alexis’s hand.

“Sir,” he says as he presses a glass into Cain’s hand.

It’s a moment of victory, but Cain doesn’t know who’s won. As he closes his fingers around the stem of the glass, he feels a trust he never thought he’d succumb to again curling itself tight in his stomach. It could be a grand mistake, trusting Riff, but it’s suddenly impossible to _not_.

“Father,” Cain says after taking a drink to ensure his voice doesn’t come out hoarse. “Welcome home.”

“This is Michaela,” Alexis says by way of greeting. The girl at his side steps forward. In this light, the maniacal gleam in her eyes is clear. “She has yet to dance tonight.”

The implied order is clear, but Cain doesn’t act--whether to obey or refuse--immediately. The missing pieces and answers come back to mind. Alexis’s grand plan comes back to mind. The girl who looks like Suzette, smiling at him from  behind her lashes, is almost certainly the newest piece of the puzzle.

Cain can’t make her fit, either. His father has never taken in interesting choosing him a bride. That couldn’t be what he means for Michaela to be. Alexis knows better than to attempt such a scheme that Cain would never comply with. It leaves Michaela a question, another factor introduced with ambiguous intent.

Riff is warm against his back. Cain extends his hand to Michaela and leaves overanalyzation for later. (He isn’t comfortable leaving the question alone and unresolved, but he isn’t sure he has another choice.)

Michaela presses her skirts to him as she walks him into the dance. “I love this song,” she says in a voice with a uncannily familiar tone. She smiles and laughs as they move. She exudes breathless charm beyond her years, but Cain finds it easy enough to ignore with suspicion reigning king in his mind. If she notices his lack of interest, she doesn’t seem to care as she presses closer.

They dance for two songs before a brass player Cain thinks he recognizes steals her away, most likely in an attempt to antagonize Cain--completely unaware of the great favor he’s doing him. Cain finds a glass of something stronger by the bar and evades any eyes he knows until he finds Riff by the piano.

“You were quite rude to my father,” Cain says. The unfamiliar knot of trust rolls beneath his skin once more and he wonders if it’s true, or if his suspicions were simply too focused on Michaela to leave room for Riff.

Riff, who smiles up at him and moves to leave him room on the piano bench. “He was making you uncomfortable.”

Cain finishes his drink before he sits. Riff, who would risk a promising career as a concert pianist for the sake of standing strong against Cain’s father. Riff, who he met so coincidentally that it could hardly be an accident.

And Riff, who he’s tired of questioning and of doubting and--.

Cain nods at the piano and takes one of Riff’s hands to place it on faux ivory. “I’m tired. I want to hear you play.”

Without question and without pause, Riff settles his hands over the keys and begins to play the Appassionata.

 

Riff stays the night. Cain waits for the sound of him moving in the guest room to stop before he opens the notebooks he keeps in his rooms. He writes Michaela’s name down in an empty space next to Alexis’s. Underneath it, he writes (in smaller lettering) Suzette. The web that’s developing on paper and in ink becomes more convoluted each day as Cain notes down every shift in Alexis’s tone and demeanor as they spoke, every stray mention of Jezebel or Augusta or any number of villains of his past, and--now--every crazed tic in Michaela’s movements that he can remember.

He stays up later and wakes up earlier. He asks Riff to live with him. (“There’s no sense in keeping a hotel room when I have plenty of room here,” he says to end the discussion.) He continues his work as Alexis’s old concertmaster sits in jail for a crime Cain is certain he didn’t commit.

And when he still can’t put a name to reason as dark circles begin to appear under his eyes, he puts his notes away and calls Merryweather before bed.

“Are you coming home for the new year, Cain?” she asks him.

He can’t bring himself to lie to her or deny her the answer she wants. Instead, he books her a flight and the next plane to London and knows she’ll come because he needs more than anything to have her with him.

“Come see me play, Merry. We’ll be home soon.”

_and that’s all...?_


End file.
